Last week I was blogging about the guidelines for prayer offered by the Heidelberg Catechism and I whizzed right by one that some may find troubling. When we pray, says the Catechism, we are supposed to ask
“for everything God has commanded us to ask for.”
It sounds like we are playing the spiritual version of the old children’t game “Simon Says.” You remember: One kid gives the orders.
“Simon says: ‘Hands on your head!’”
“Simon says: ‘Stick out your tongue.’”
You only stay in the game if you do exactly what Simon says.
Is Heidelberg saying prayer is like that? God barks commands and we jump to it? Pray exactly what God says to pray or you are out of the game? Heaven help you if you just pray for what you think you need. Okay, that doesn’t work. Heaven is only helping if you ignore what you think you need and ask for what God says you need.
The next question relieves my fears.
118Q. What did God command us to pray for?
A. Everything we need, spiritually and physically,
as embraced in the prayer
Christ our Lord himself taught us.
The next question quotes the Lord’s Prayer in full. This is an altogether new version of the children’s game:
God says, “What do you need?”
God says, “Ask for it!”
And then, if we don’t know what to ask for,
God says, “Take a look at the Lord’s Prayer.”
To take this advice from the Heidelberg Catechism we have to think differently about the Lord’s Prayer. Basically we need to stop thinking of it as a little ditty we rattle off in worship without thinking. We need to think of it as a broad list of topics that Jesus invites us (commands us, really) to pray about.
That was maybe more familiar to 16th century Protestants — Luther wrote several commentaries on the Lord’s Prayer to help his followers learn to pray this way. He wanted us to take each line in turn and spend some time praying on its topic in our own words. (I have a chapter on this approach of Martin Luther’s in my book, Kneeling with Giants: Learning to Pray with History’s Best Teachers.)
When you take it this way, praying for what God commands us to pray about is not restrictive. It is a really broad invitation. We are to bring God all our needs and troubles, from mundane matters of the food we’ll eat today to things as grand as the coming of God’s kingdom.
This counter-cultural emphasis on praying what God commands us to pray for is potentially really helpful. If I don’t know what to pray for, or fear God doesn’t want to hear from me, the command of Jesus gives me a push.
The Catechism pictures prayer as a really rich, fully engaged conversation with God. And it portrays prayer as crucial to the Christian life: It is nothing less than the most important part of the gratitude we owe God. And Heidelberg devotes its last ten questions to the Lord’s Prayer to prompt us to give it the attention it deserves. I’m going to blog my way through those questions over the next while — with other topics mixed in, of course.
- Have you ever tried using the Lord’s Prayer as an outline of topics? What was it like?
- What lines of the Lord’s Prayer sound challenging or confusing as topics?
Tweetable: “How can Christians know what to pray about? | @garynealhansen #prayer http://bit.ly/YrmmHP“
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Hi Gary, Susan here.
1. Liked the chapter in kneeling w giants. Often use Luther’s method as outline to meditate on my dependency on God to meet all my needs as well as guideline to fully cover “needed” topics on days I find my thoughts racing ahead and feel my prayer my not be giving His holy majesty due respect. 2. I also have several times over the course of my journey paraphrased in my own words the Lord’s Prayer. Now I find when I go back (occasionally) & read journals just how all encompassing is that perfect prayer. No matter what was happening or what stage of life: childhood, teens, 20’s, 30’s etc the outline of what we are to ask – always fit.
In answer to ?2 – yes there is one phrase that I pause to believe is translated correctly in English to our Lord’s intent. That phrase is “lead us not into temptation”. I simply do not believe God would ever tempt his children to sin. Prove me wrong w scripture & I will adjust. But in the meantime I think it is incorrectly translated.
Thanks Susan —
Yes it is all encompassing. Luther would agree with your assessment that it is a “perfect prayer”. He said something to the effect that if Jesus had known a better one he would have taught it to us!
The Greek word typically translated “temptation” in Matthew’s version of the Lord’s prayer does indeed get translated differently in other contexts, most typically as “trial”. In fact there is a newer translation of the Lord’s Prayer put forth by an ecumenical group called the “English Language Liturgical Commission” that has that line “Save us from the time of trial”. It might be easier to pray that way. Though there is good reason to say God won’t tempt us to sin, there is also good reason to say that his plans often include trials.
Gary: Agree. Thank you for the clarification. Trials Jesus did promise would come to His followers.
Hi Gary – I had never considered the depths of the Lord’s Prayer as a model until about 2 years ago when our pastor did a sermon series on it. There is so much we can learn from it!
I agree that we need to just take everything to the Lord – no restrictions. My difficulty has been in getting caught up in the analysis of prayer – how does it “work”? I wrote a blog post this morning on it actually (http://christianmomthoughts.com/how-does-prayer-work/), but the gist is that it’s easy to get caught up in the concern of prayer “efficiency”; how to give God the best “input” to achieve the “output” we want. As I wrote in the post: “The problem is, we have no actual ability to create “efficient” prayers. A machinist would tell you that you can’t control efficiency without understanding the machine’s process. Similarly, without the knowledge of God’s process, we have no ability to control the “output” with our “input.” Perhaps that’s precisely why God kept his “prayer machine” a mystery. If we understood all the pieces, we would only need to rely on our correct inputs rather than God’s sovereignty. The fact that the Bible tells us over and over to pray while giving us little knowledge of how God actually uses our prayers leaves me with the conclusion that prayer is overwhelmingly about humility. It’s a posture of total trust placed not in anything we do or say, but in the power of God’s sovereignty.”
I need to get out of my analysis paralysis when it comes to prayer and really pray like that!
Thanks Natasha, for your thoughts and the link to your great blog. You articulate a crucial struggle lots of us face!
For me, the key to the shift you speak of comes with the inner definition of prayer I work with.
If prayer is most basically supplication and intercession — asking God to do things for me and for others — then I find myself drawn into the question of how to make it work in terms of, as you put it, inputs and outputs. I’ll want to know what to do to get God to answer, and especially to answer in the way I asked him to.
But that does sound like a machine, doesn’t it? Inputs and outputs?
If instead I start with a definition of prayer as communion with Someone I love above all things, or at least as conversation, then it all shifts. Since it is about relationship with a Person, I really don’t want it to be about efficiency or (in less mechanistic terms) persuasion. I find that the invitation to draw close and talk to God about virtually everything is what really moves me.
God is free, God loves me more than I dare to think, and God is smarter than I am about all my circumstances. That leaves me content to make all my requests and leave the answers in his hands. (Rather as I wish my 2 year old and 4 year old would do with me!)
Beautifully said! It really does require that transformation in our thinking so prayer becomes about communion. I love the way you said that. Thank you for those additional thoughts!
We’re in the same boat with our kids – except I have twin 4 year olds and a 2 year old. 🙂